fillosophy

In any successful relationship, there’s a natural balance between two people. This balance, though not literal, could be represented by a balance scale - where in each person stands on their respective side, and then articles of that relationship can be weighed in. For example; take “Joe” he’s a stalker. Put him on a scale with who he’s stalking, we’ll call her “Jane” (Joe:Jane), and relationship items would look like this:

Thoughtfulness (100:0)
Emotional Attachment (100:0)
Attentiveness (100:0)
Appreciation (100:0)

Since Joe, here, is acting on impulses, regardless of reaction from Jane, he simply takes on every other aspect of his “relations” with Jane; and compensates (within his brain) for her lack of input. This is an extreme case, and not quite a relationship; considering stalkers are one sided psychopaths that don’t need any input from others to established … feelings, if you can even call’m that. But apply this to a successful relationship. Joe’s awesome and into Jane, Jane loves Joe with everything.

Thoughtfulness (50:50)
Emotional Attachment (45:55)
Attentiveness (55:45)
Appreciation (50:50)

Since Jane’s more emotional about things and Joe is given more opportunities to be attentive to her emotional states; including her attachment to him - he gets to the slightly more attentive one. Most males are more attentive (brain) than emotional (heart) anyhow; its no surprise that women are emotional, driven by hormonal shifts and have been even given a bad wrap, more often than not, for being illogical and irrationally controlled by them at least a week a month. In actuality, some women are controlled by their emotions and do act irrationally. God forbid if you ever have to handle one of these…

So; with that in mind you can imagine why relationships will fail. if the input isn’t 100% combined, then compensation will begin one way or the other. Example: Joe’s less attentive toward Jane for some reason; perhaps his attentiveness has been redirected to the new secretary at work. First off, if this happens, there’s another problem - being satisfied in his current relationship; or at least feeling as though he’s getting back what he’s putting into his relationship. There are two reason’s people start to stray from their responsibilities in a relationship; either the fault of themselves, or their mate.

Regardless, Joe’s attentive score within his relationship is now (35); and Jane recognizes this and tries to compensate by being inquisitive about what he’s doing and she starts to pay attention to his actions and actually overshoots the attention to his actions. Jane (75).
What you have now is (35:75); for you math inept, that’s 110, and chances are Jane’s not going to ease off if Joe’s pushing away, after all her emotional attachment rating is probably fluctuating as a result as well as Joe’s is becoming more distant, as is Thoughtfulness and Appreciation is definitely slipping:

Thoughtfulness (40:60)
Emotional Attachment (35:65)
Attentiveness (35:75)
Appreciation (35:65)

No matter how it’s scaled; there are a number of problems that are occurring. Once you have anything that measures outside of the 60/40 range you’re in trouble. And if you have something that’s over balanced, it will smooth itself out and cause more troubles. “Attentiveness (25:75)” for example; meaning Joe’s thinking about Secretary AS much as Jane now, and its only a matter of time before the domino effect gets into full swing, and:

Thoughtfulness (25:75)
Emotional Attachment (20:80)
Attentiveness (20:80)
Appreciation (20:80)

At this point you have someone that’s more that likely being cheated on; and though this is a specific case, there are many things that can cause this balance shift - “faithfulness” is the easiest subject to attack, since most people can relate to it. Most people, regardless of sex, will do one of two things in this situation; get angry and seek results, if they’re in over their heads on the output they’re giving without receiving any feedback - or they’ll simply make excuses for themselves and continue to compensate and over-compensate, pushing their “significant other” farther away, while allowing them to get away with whatever it is they’re doing to distance themselves from the person they supposedly are with.

Some people do both; they get pissed off and know what’s going on, but are strong enough and intelligent enough to ease the relationship back into balance using things such as forgiveness, guilt, judgment, and flat out punishment. Depending on how much these things are used will determine where the balance ends up; if it doesn’t completely break down entirely.

Anyhow, Joe and Jane, they started out with the best intentions toward each other, but what might have happened? All infidelity comes from a single point in any relationship, and it usually is present from the very beginning; Jane wasn’t what Joe really wanted or pictured himself with; Joe’s lower ranking in emotional attachment from the start was a result of him not really wanting to fully commit, and thus was more attentive to Jane - to see when and where he could make his break and start to look elsewhere… there’s countless things that could do this; but for my example we’ll go with the latter.

Actually, instead of turning this into a “how cheaters become cheaters” blog, here’s a few tips on how to make adjustments properly and a huge tip that will help everyone in a struggling relationship…

Huge Tip: If your relationship is on the rocks, its going to take communication and time… separately. If you don’t give the other person time to be their own person, you’re going to lose; and even more so, if the time has come to talk things out and all you can do is be upset and fly off the handle? You’re only going to push them away again… if you do that it’s probably what you want anyhow. Since you’re too frustrated with “what they’ve done to you” to actually want to repair anything, you just want them to know how you feel at that point - and that’s simply selfish. Regardless of what you think; selfish acts of emotional expression, no matter how good they feel at the time, cause irreparable emotional scars on yourself more than them. From a guy’s point of view; if someone’s getting heated over a situation or coming out of left field with something… you’re now a psycho that I can definitely live without. (so to speak)

How to adjust the balance: The numbers in my example aren’t a literal; and neither are the measurements. I mean, if I could sit here and label all the items involved in the balance between two people… well… lets just say that’d take too much space and time to compile that list. But, not literal… there’s no set number of “what needs to be done”; the speed of the relationship doesn’t always have to be 60mph, it can be 10mph and still be at a (50:50) or close enough to it. Think of the ratios as a percentage of the whole. The “Whole” is whatever arbitrary number you want it to be; or whatever it is measured, if you can do that.

Try to work with each other to make adjustments in the “Whole”. If Joe slows things down, then Jane should as well. If Jane doesn’t understand why, then TIME and COMMUNICATION have to be factors, give it time - for when talk is ready.

How to not make adjustments: If Joe is taking the speed of things from 50mph to 20mph, Jane might want to over compensate for that by taking her speed from 50mph to 80mph and just drive into a brick wall with Joe. This is what I call the catastrophic relationship traffic accident.

Good news is, people survive even the ugliest of traffic accidents; real life & metaphorically in relationships. Its all about how you recover. Unfortunately, the brutally ugly reality of things is; sometimes one person survives and the other doesn’t… in terms of relationship; this is what happens when being cheated on is moved into the equation… loyalty and trust issues fuck everything up.

enrique
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